How To Prevent A Smartphone Chaffeur From Turning Into A Stalker

The rise of the share economy translates into a whole lot of informal business interactions. Your AirBnB host is not a hotel industry veteran and your Lyft driver is not a long-time cabbie. There is money exchanged but there's a "thanks, bro" aspect to the transaction because the person providing services doesn't do it as a full-time job, and because the services often hinge on connecting with people through social profiles. It's as if the person is doing you a favor that they get paid for.

Companies such as ride-sharing service Lyft encourage that, telling riders to hop in the front seat and greet their drivers with a fist bump. The tag line for the service is not "catch a ride with a stranger" or "pay a random dude a few bucks to go out of his way" but "your friend with a car." For one San Franciscan, Lyft turned into "a sketchy friend with a car." The service masks the numbers of those who use the service so that two people can't contact each other again after a ride has happened, but at the end of a Lyft ride in June, the driver asked this woman for her digits saying he would like to hang out. She tells Valleywag that she felt "really uncomfortable being put on the spot so [she] gave him [her] number and bounced." The inherent informality of the ride may have been her reason for handing it over, or it may have simply been the weird but undeniable human discomfort that comes with saying the word "no."

That led to a series of texts asking to hang out (which she basically ignored), then texts asking what was wrong (which she responded to revealing she was busy planning a trip to New York), then texts asking if they could hang out in New York as he would be there too (creepy), then texts telling her she was rude, then texts about his having cancer, then more texts revealing he didn't have cancer, and on and on.

This really isn't Lyft's fault. It's the kind of thing that can happen anytime you have an interaction with a stranger -- which is the case almost anytime you have a business interaction. The problem for companies in the share economy space is the perception that in a peer-to-peer scenario, this will happen more often as there are a bunch of non-professionals "working" for you, which is why AirBnB, for example, now has a robust safety team. Lyft has a rigorous screening process for drivers, though it's hard to screen for "creepy." Lyft spokesperson Erin Simpson says the company's "screening process includes a criminal background check that is more strict than what is required for California limo and taxi drivers."

"We’re sorry that this passenger had to deal with this situation," says Simpson by email. "Passengers are able to leave feedback immediately following a ride using the app and drivers’ accounts with low ratings are disabled. While the post was anonymous, we have a support case that matches [the Valleywag recounting in] both timing and story details, and that driver’s account was disabled."

Lyft has a perfectly good system in place to prevent something like this from happening -- it uses a third-party service to mask both driver and passenger phone numbers -- but there's also a back-up app option for those too uncomfortable to reject a request for their number. It's called Burner. It's an app that will, for a charge, provide you with a disposable phone number that you can hand out to someone and then delete at a later time, cutting your mobile ties with that person. The company calls it a "privacy layer" for your phone.

Useful for Craigslist transactions, blind first dates, and strangers you're not sure you want to see again, it's yet another brilliant tech innovation for smoothing out potentially uncomfortable human interactions. Rather than telling that blind date you don't want to see her again, you can just delete the burner number. Rather than telling the Lyft driver that he's a creep, *poof* goes the number.

As with any privacy product, there are ways to abuse the anonymity. An infamous former intern for Paul Ryan allegedly used a bunch of Google Voice numbers as "burners" to harass women he knew while concealing his identity.

Of course, you have to pull up the "Burner" app and generate the number without the person on the other side of the transaction seeing you do it, which might have been hard in the Lyft interaction. The analog solution for this type of scenario -- when you're certain you never want to see the other person again -- is to make up a fake number. Or just say no and exit the vehicle.

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Full statement from Lyft:

We’re sorry that this passenger had to deal with this situation - it’s not acceptable behavior for anyone in the Lyft community. The Lyft team takes trust and safety matters such as this very seriously. Our screening process includes a criminal background check that is more strict than what is required for California limo and taxi drivers. Additionally, to protect personal identity, Lyft uses a third-party service that masks both driver and passenger phone numbers. Any reports of inappropriate driver conduct are investigated and appropriate actions are taken. Passengers are able to leave feedback immediately following a ride using the app and drivers’ accounts with low ratings are disabled. While the post was anonymous, we have a support case that matches both timing and story details, and that driver’s account was disabled.